1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a disposable nursing pad for a lactating woman, which has a function of absorbing mother's milk (excess mother's milk) secreted from the breasts (nipples).
2. Related Art
In general, a great amount of a mother's milk is secreted in response to the sucking stimulation from a baby. However, in some cases, the mother's milk leaks without any sucking stimulation. Also, the left and right breasts both respond together. Accordingly, when a mother's breast feeds a baby, the mother's milk is also secreted from the other breast. In order to keep a wearer's clothing dry from such undesired leakage of the mother's milk, a lactating mother wears nursing pads in contact with the inner face of the wearer's underclothing such as a bra or the like, which envelopes the breasts, thereby absorbing the excess mother's milk. In general, such a nursing pad has a layered structure with a surface member which is directly in contact with the breast, an absorbent member for absorbing the mother's milk, and a water-proof member for preventing the absorbed mother's milk from leaking out to the wearer's clothing. Also, a nursing pad with a three-dimensional shape, which is formed beforehand into a shape having a protruding portion at the center thereof such that it can envelope a breast, has been proposed as shown in FIG. 11. This allows the nursing pad to be easier to wear, and improves the degree of fit of the nursing pad with respect to the breast when it is being worn.
Here, the nursing pad is manufactured by press working as follows. First, two-dimensional sheets, which are component layers, are layered so as to form a pad. Then, heat is applied to the entire pad thus formed. However, in some cases, with the nursing pad thus molded into the three-dimensional shape of a dome by the manufacturing process, the nursing pad has a poor capacity to maintain its shape. This leads to a problem in which the nursing pad becomes deformed due to being dampened by mother's milk, or due to the pressure applied thereto from the movement of the wearer. This results in the deterioration of the degree of fit of the nursing pad with respect to the breast of the wearer. Also, there is a problem in that such a nursing pad feels coarse and stiff due to hardening of the component sheets after a heating step, where heat is applied to the nursing pad such that it is formed into the shape of a dome. In order to solve this problem, the aforementioned conventional nursing pad includes a support member which has a lower melting point than that of the water-proof member, and which is provided between the water-proof member and the absorbent member. With such an arrangement, the nursing pad is formed into the shape of a dome by the application of heat at a temperature which is lower than the temperature that causes thermal deformation of the water-proof member, and which is higher than the melting point of the support member. This allows the shape of the support member to be changed, thereby enabling the nursing pad to be formed in the shape of a dome.
Patent Document 1
Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2000-226702
Press working the entire area of the nursing pad allows the absorbent member and the water-proof member to be molded into a three-dimensional shape. However, it is difficult to mold the surface member into the three-dimensional shape. Specifically, the molding of the surface member into the three-dimensional shape leads to it feeling coarse and stiff. The surface member is a component layer which is to be in contact with the skin. Accordingly, a surface member which feels coarse and stiff, leads to friction with the skin, often resulting in causing skin problems. Regarding this point, with the aforementioned conventional arrangement, the component member which is subjected to heat shaping processing is the support member provided between the water-proof member and the absorbent member. While such an arrangement also facilitates the molding of the absorbent member and the water-proof member into a three-dimensional shape, it is difficult to mold the surface member into a three-dimensional shape, since it is not directly in contact with the support member, which is the remaining problem.
In order to prevent the surface member from becoming stiff and coarse, in some cases, a method is employed in which the nursing pad is molded into a three-dimensional shape without the application of heat to the center of the surface member, which is in contact with the nipple. In this case, the center of the surface member is not molded into the three-dimensional shape. This often causes a gap between the absorbent member which has been molded into the three-dimensional shape, and the surface member. Such a gap leads to a problem in which the mother's milk flows through the surface of the surface member on the side in contact with the skin of the wearer or flows through the inside of the surface member. This results in a problem in which the mother's milk does not reach the absorbent member, or a problem in which the surface member comes in contact with the skin of the wearer. On the other hand, let us consider an arrangement in which the surface member and the absorbent member are adhered to each other by adhesive. However, during use of the nursing pad, the absorbent member absorbs the mother's milk. This causes the adhesion of the interface between the absorbent member and the adhesive to deteriorate. This causes the abovementioned gap to occur more often, leading to a reduction of absorption efficiency. This also causes leakage of the mother's milk.